Our Inner Battles Don’t Have To Make Us Feel So Alone

Sometimes I wish my struggles didn’t exist. I wish that my problems would just disappear, and I don’t particularly know how to make them go away. I don’t particularly enjoy talking about them either, not because I’m ashamed that they’re there but because I don’t want anyone to worry, to worry about me, about whether or not I’m ‘okay’ (whatever the hell that means).

Because sometimes I feel like I have to be the strong one, the dependable one, the one who has it all together, most if not all of the time, and other times I really just want to scream at the top of my lungs, “I STRUGGLE TOO.” There are those times I feel so utterly alone. Like no one could be as internally fucked up as I am, and maybe that’s the real reason I don’t like talking about it. Maybe I’m struggling with myself.

Maybe I feel like I have to be the strong one all the time simply because I’ve made myself that way. Because I’ve put all this pressure on my body and my mind and it just reacts by default like it’s giving into this coercion I’ve created all on my own. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m human, that there’s only so much I can do and be, and that what everyone else thinks or sees isn’t that important, because the people who love me, the people who genuinely care about me, they won’t judge whatever inner struggle I’m going through, no matter how fucked up or completely irrational I think it is. And if only I could remember this, if only we all could remember this, our inner struggles wouldn’t have to feel so lonely.

If only we could remember that the ones we love and the ones who love us don’t want us to hold our struggles in. They want us to talk about it, not so they can judge and say, “Oh wow you’re really not the perfect person I thought you were,” (or the perfect person you think they wished you were) but so they can help, and if they can’t help, so they can just listen and be there for you, so you can finally be heard. Because them just being there, will already make you feel so much less alone.

We don’t have to be so afraid of disappointing everyone. Because when I really think about it, that’s the one thing that’s making me feel so very lonely, disappointment. Our inner struggles aren’t disappointing. They’re not embarrassing either. They’re real. They exist. And I wish I knew how to truly make them go away, but I don’t. I don’t know how to quiet the thoughts that keep us up at night, the ones that whisper in our ears and make us wish we knew the sound of silence, but I do know that they don’t go away by pretending. Our inner struggles don’t have to make us feel so alone. I’ve got them too, and I’m here for you.